A “Grand Tour” in old photos - tour images show travel in the Edwardian era

Updated on October 1, 2012

A Grand Tour

A mistake. It is a tower and not a tour

that does not crumble.

And we will make arrangements now

to take a guided tour of this tower

and soon find out that there are no stairs

and when you get to the top

there is no view.

(From The Metaphysical Paintings by John Perreault)

Gerrit and Mina du Plessis

Grand Tour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Grand Tour was the traditional travel of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of mass railroad transit in the 1840s.

Introduction – what was the “Grand Tour”?

"According to the law of custom, and perhaps
of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English
gentleman." – Edward Gibbon

“To collect photographs is to collect the
world .” – Susan Sontag

“...a
photograph is not only an image, an interpretation of the real; it is also a
trace, something directly stencilled off the real ” (Sontag, Susan 1982 The Image World ).

I love old photographs. Perhaps
it’s because they give us a glimpse of what people thought was interesting or
important at the time they were taken. They pique our curiosity and perhaps
evoke a nostalgia for a time we can never again experience. Maybe they also
depict a “reality” without the problems and difficulties, the fears and
discomforts, of confronting “reality” in the here and now.

So when I discovered a
bunch of photographs that had been collected in the very early years of the
last (20th) Century they piqued my curiosity greatly. I still have
no surety which of my relatives collected these pictures but I think it might
have been my great-aunt Mina and her husband, the Rev Gerrit du Plessis.
Great-aunt Mina was my paternal grandfather’s sister and she and her husband
made a few trips to Europe, at least one of them before the Great War of 1914
to 1918. The subject matter of the photos, at least those that I can identify
or which have labels, reminded me of the concept of the “Grand Tour” and I’m
sure that the Du Plessis collected them much in the spirit of the original
“Grand Tourists” and, being good Calvinists, in the spirit identified by Susan
Sontag in her great essay On Photography:

“The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work
ethic – Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety
which the work driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and
supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly
imitation of work: they can take pictures.”

The Du
Plessis did not take photographs, as far as I know, but would have collected
them at every stop along their “Grand Tour” as a justification for their being
there, “a friendly imitation of work.”

These photos are mostly commercial, though there is no
indication of the identity of the photographer on any of them.

The “Grand Tour” undertaken by upper class young men from
the UK followed a fairly set pattern or itinerary: they went, via Dover and
Calais, to Paris for some learning and experience in matters of government and
diplomacy; thence to Switzerland, where mountaineering was eagerly practiced;
thence to Italy for some tastes of classical art, especially in Florence,
Venice and, of course, Rome (with a side-trip to Pompeii and Herculaneum for
the more adventurous – many attracted, no doubt, by the titillating thought of
the “secret” art to be found there) to see the Forum and the classical
architecture.

From southern Europe
the return trip was usually made through Germany and Holland. For some a side
trip would also be made to Spain. And then back to the UK to uplift those who
were not fortunate enough to make the Tour with accounts of the travels and
explanations of the many artefacts and artworks brought back home.

Paignton Pier

Bournemouth Pier from East Cliff

The Great Doward

"Sprites" by Gustave Dore

The English photos

My unknown forebear took in some sights in the UK, such as
Bournemouth and Paignton.

Paignton Pier was opened in 1879 in the Devon resort town
of Paignton and became famous for its entertainment, including a performance in
1880 of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore. The pier was destroyed by fire in
1919, so the photograph at left must date from before then.

My unknown relative presumably was there before the fire.

The pier was redeveloped in the 1980s to offer more modern
entertainments.

Another photograph in the collection is of Bournemouth
Pier. This Pier was opened in 1880. It was 838 feet long (about 255 metres)
when opened but extensions in 1894 and 1909 took the length to more than 1000
feet (about 305 metres).

The photo of Bournemouth Pier was taken from East Cliff. It’s
difficult to put a date to the photo but cars and a bus are visible so my guess
would be just prior to the First World War (perhaps around 1910 or so?).

The last English photo in the collection is of the Great
Doward in Herefordshire, site of the Doward Caves, one of the places in which
King Arthur and his knights are said to be waiting until England should need
them again. The town of Great Doward is on the River Wye, which can be seen in
the photo. I’m not sure where King Arthur’s Cave might be relative to this
photo.

The legends of King
Arthur are still reverberating in popular culture as they have done since the
publication of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia
Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain ) in the 12th
Century, with echoes in German and French literature of subsequent Centuries.
Indeed the French writer Chretien de Troyes started the whole romanticisation
of the Arthurian legend by adding, among other things, the quest for the Holy
Grail into the story, which brings us right up to Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code , by way of Thomas
Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur and
Tennyson’s Idylls of the King .

Along this long and winding trail
a great many accretions have been added to the story, from beautiful damsels in
distress, adulteries, murders, and even “joyous sprites” as recounted in Idylls of the King :

“And still at evenings
on before his horse
The flickering fairy-circle wheeled and broke
Flying, and linked again, and wheeled and broke
Flying, for all the land was full of life.”

The picture of the sprites is by Gustave Doré, the French
artist, who illustrated Tennyson’s epic poem in the late 19th
Century. Doré was highly successful as an illustrator because his engravings
were completely in tune with the romantic outlook of the Victorian era, the era
of the Grand Tour par excellance .

As Graham Phillips writes in a recent book about Arthur:
“Travelling the length and breadth of the British Isles, we discover a wealth
of Arthurian legend; in every part of the land the great king lives on in
folklore. Tales tell how he was born here or died there; that he fought a
dragon in this valley, or killed a giant on that mountain. There are Arthur's
Hills, Arthur's Stones and Arthur's Caves. King Arthur features in more legends
attached to ancient sites in England and Wales than any other character.”

Phillips adds, somewhat sardonically: “The world over, King
Arthur is a bestseller.”

The Eiffel Tower

On to Paris and the Eiffel Tower

But back to our tour – next stop, Paris!

And what could more excitingly symbolise the City of Light
than the Eiffel Tower?

The Eiffel Tower has
become the quintessential sight that tells you that you are in Paris, for so
long the centre of culture and all that was modern in the world.

The modernism of the Eiffel Tower was and is not
accidental, after all was built as the entrance to the Exposition Universelle held to mark the 100th
anniversary of the French Revolution, “the best of times, the worst of times”,
which brought politics into the modern era much as the Industrial Revolution
forced the processes of production into modern modes.

And the Eiffel Tower was, with its 7 300 tons of “puddled
iron” in 18 000 pieces, held together with more than two million rivets, built
by some 300 workers, a potent symbol of industrialisation. It was at the time
of its building (it was completed in March 1889) the tallest tower in the
world, a distinction it held until it was overtaken in 1930 by the Chrysler
Building in New York City. The Tower is still, however, the tallest structure
in Paris.

In spite of the relatively primitive safety precautions
available at the time of the building of the Tower, remarkably only one worker
was killed during its construction. This was due to the extraordinary efforts
made by designer Gustave Eiffel to ensure safety on the open construction.

As with most modern cultural artefacts, the Tower was not
well-received by all. Novelist Guy de Maupassant is said to have so hated it
that he lunched every day in the restaurant in the Tower, because it was the
one place in Paris from which he could not see the Tower!

Basilique du Sacr-Cur

Basilique du Sacré-Cœur and Montmartre

The next stop on this Grand Tour is the Basilica of the
Sacred Heart (Basilique du Sacré-Cœur) on the summit of Montmartre, the highest point in Paris and the source of
the name of the locale of the birth of much modern art. Here many artists whose
names became synonymous with modernism in the arts, lived and worked: De
Jonking, Pissarro, Cézanne, Manet, Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Degas, Renoir,
Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Derain, Villon, Duchamp, Dufy, Susanne Valadon,
Utrillo, Toulouse Lautrec, and Gen Paul.

New art movements
flourished here, many were born here, in the exciting creative buzz that was
happening in the suburb below the hill on which sat the Basilica: Impressionism
flourished here, as did synthesism and symbolism. Cubism was born here in the
tenement known as Le Bateau-Lavoir (the laundry-boat) . In this run-down building Picasso painted the famous Les Demoiselles d’Avignon , which started
the cubist revolution in painting. Other artists who lived in the building were
Pablo Gargallo, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre Reverdy
(1912-1913), André Salmon, and Endre Rozsda.

And it was not only painters who
made the place famous: writers and actors and ballet dancers and composers all
made their homes below the Basilica, which sat like icing on top of a cake,
glistening white in the sunshine. The area became famous also for the clubs and
restaurants that flourished there in the creative ferment of the late 19th
and early 20th Centuries: Le Chat Noir, the Moulin de la Galette,
and, of course, the Moulin Rouge.

The Basilica glistened white (and
still does) because the travertine stone of which it is built constantly exudes
calcite which overcomes even the ravages of weathering and pollution.
Construction of the church was begun in 1875, but only completed in 1914, by
which time the First World War interrupted progress so that the consecration of
the church to the Sacred Heart only took place in 1919.

The church has a rather ambiguous
place in history as it was built to "expiate the crimes of the communards"according to the decree of the Assemblée nationale of 24 July 1873. The communards were those citizens
of Paris who resisted the Prussian advance into the city and formed their own
city government in defiance of the central national government which had
capitulated to the Prussians. This was a rebellion of the people, who demanded "la
république démocratique et sociale!" ("the democratic and social
republic!"). The commune existed for a few weeks, from 18 March to 28 May
1871.

The rebellion was brutally suppressed by the provisional government
headed by Adolfe Thiers, who was concerned that the Prussians would be provoked
by the alternative government which the Paris Commune represented. An estimated
30 000 people died in the final week of the commune, known as La Semaine Sanglante. Tens of thousands of communards were subsequently executed. In one
incident central government troops dynamited the entrances to caves where
communards had taken refuge, sealing them, alive, in their tombs.

Notre Dame de Reims

Jean D’Arc and Notre Dame de Reims

In
front of the Basilica there are two patriotic statues, one of Jean D’Arc (Joan
of Arc) and the other of King Louis IX. This sculpture of the woman Bernard
Shaw called “ ... the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and
the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages.” The
accompanying picture, though, is not of the statue at Sacré-Cœur.

Shaw
went on (in the Preface to his play Saint Joan) to describe the ambiguous
and different nature of this extraordinary woman: “Though a professed and most
pious Catholic, and the projector of a Crusade against the Hussites, she was in
fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She was also one of the first
apostles of Nationalism, and the first French practitioner of Napoleonic
realism in warfare as distinguished from the sporting ransom-gambling chivalry
of her time.”

The Wikipedia article on Jean
d’Arc summarises her short life and great accomplishments thusly: “A peasant
girl born in Eastern France, Joan led the French army to several important
victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was
indirectly responsible for the coronation of King Charles VII. She was captured
by the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court and burned at the stake when
she was nineteen years old.”

The case was reviewed by the Vatican some 24 years later and Joan was
exonerated. She was beatified in 1909 and canonised in 1920. Shaw’s comment on
this: “The question then arises: how did The Church get over the verdict at the
first trial when it canonized Joan five hundred years later?”

“Easily enough.” Shaw continues.
“In the Catholic Church, far more than in law, there is no wrong without a
remedy.”

Joan was instrumental in getting
the Dauphin, later to be Charles VII, crowned at the traditional scene of
French coronations, the cathedral of Notre
Dame de Reims, on 17 July 1429.

After the coronation a series of
political blunders led to her eventual capture in May 1430, by the Burgundian
faction which was allied to the English. The English Government bought Joan
from her Burgundian captors and set about trying her for heresy. The trial
itself was full of legal problems and the illiterate young woman showed
considerable theological skill in her own defence. She was asked the trick question
whether or not she knew she was in God’s grace. If she had answered “Yes” she
would have been guilty of heresy, as Church doctrine proclaimed that no-one
could know for sure if they were in a state of grace. If she had answered “No”
that would have been a confession of guilt. Her subtle answer: “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.”

Nonetheless she was found guilty
of heresy and condemned to death, the sentence being carried out on 30 May
1431when she was burned at the stake in the Ville-Marche in Rouen. This verdict
was overturned in a later trial which, on 7 July 1456 declared her innocent and
her chief accuser Bishop Pierre Cauchon guilty of heresy instead. This was
rather too late to do her any good!

All this has taken us rather far
from Paris, but we haven’t finished there yet!

Napoleon and the Arc de Triomphe

Let’s go back to the Arc de
Triomphe, sitting in the middle of the Place
de l’Etoile at the Western end of the Champs-Élysées,
that grand boulevard which is one of the most famous streets in the world.

The Arc was commissioned by
Napoleon after the Battle of Austerlitz in 1806 and was completed in 1836. This
battle, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was decisive in
breaking the coalition against Napoleon and was greeted with almost delirious
joy by the French people. After
the battle Napoleon issued the following proclamation:

Soldats! Je suis content de vous

Soldiers: I am
satisfied with you.

In the Battle of
Austerlitz you have justified all that I expected from your intrepidity. You
have decorated your eagles with immortal glory.

An army of one
hundred thousand men, commanded by the Emperors of Russia and Austria, has
been, in less than four hours, either cut in pieces or dispersed. Thus in two
months the third coalition has been vanquished and dissolved.

Peace cannot now be
far distant. But I will make only such a peace as gives us guarantee for our
future, and secures rewards to our allies.

When everything
necessary to secure the happiness and prosperity of our country is obtained, I
will lead you back to France. My people will behold you again with joy. It will
be enough for one of you to say, 'I was at the battle of Austerlitz;' for all
your fellow citizens to exclaim, 'There is a brave man.'

The Arc was designed by Jean Chalgrin who used what is
termed an astylar style. This is a style of architecture without columns or
pilasters. It stands 49.5 metres (162 ft) high, 45 metres (148 ft)
wide and 22 metres (72 ft) deep, big enough for one Charles Godefroy, a pilot,
to fly a Nieuport 11 “Bebe” biplane through it three weeks after the Paris
Victory parade in 1919.

The Arc stands at the centre of what was called the Place de l’Etoile (Square of the Star),
so called because it was the confluence of a number of streets which radiated
in a star shape, as can be seen from the image taken from Google Earth. The
square is now officially known as the Place
Charles de Gaulle, but very often still referred to by its old name.

The Arc stands at the centre of what was called the Place de l’Etoile (Square of the Star), so called because it was the confluence of a number of streets which radiated in a star shape, as can be seen from the image taken from Google Earth

Place de la Concorde and the guillotine

At the other end of the Champs-Élysées is the Place
de la Concorde , which, in spite of its pacific name, has a very gruesome
history as the site of public executions by guillotine during the Revolution.

It was designed in 1755 by Jacques-Ange
Gabriel (although in the Wikipedia article on the Place the designer is listed
as James Mott), on commission from Louis XV. The square
was initially called Place Louis XV and during the Revolution its name was
changed in 1792 to Place de la Révolution and the infamous guillotine was set
up in place of the statue of Louis XV. Three years later the name was changed
again, this time to its present name, and where the statue of Louis XV and the
guillotine had stood, the obelisk of Luxor was erected in 1836 after a four
year journey from Luxor in Egypt. This 3 300-year-old red granite column had
been given to France by the then Viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali.

The photo of the Place
de la Concorde is apparently taken from some distance in front of the obelisk,
looking south down the Rue Royale toward L'église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine,
usually known as La Madeleine. On either side of the entrance to the Rue Royale
from the Place de la Concorde are identical buildings, also designed by
Gabriel. The one on the left in the photo houses the Hotel Crillon and the one
on the right the French Department of the Navy.

La Madeleine was conceived by Napoleon as a Temple de la Gloire de la Grande
Armée ("Temple to the Glory of the Great Army"), a tribute to the army
which won the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. However, its claim to fame as a
tribute to that army was rather overshadowed by the erection of the Arc de
Triomphe. After many vicissitudes the building was finally consecrated as a
church in 1842.

Place de la Concorde, looking down the Rue Royal to La Madeleine

Palais Garnier

Le Grande Escalier

Bridges of Paris

Sous Les Ponts de Paris and the Palais Garnier

Sous Les Ponts de Paris – that romantic song I first heard sung by the sultry Eartha Kitt many
moons ago – is brought to mind by this photo. The bridges in question as far as
I can tell are Pont Notre Dame, then the Pont au Change and the Pont Neuf. If
my identifications are correct then this photo was taken after 1914, as the
Pont Notre Dame was re-built from 1910 to 1914 as a single metal arch as seen
in the photo. Prior to that it had been a three-arched stone bridge.

One of the most beautiful buildings in a city of many
beautiful buildings is the Opéra Garnier, also known as the Opéra de Paris or the Palais Ganier,
after its designer Cahrles Garnier. Situated in the IXth Arrondissement on the
Place de l’
Opéra, the house was opened in 1875 as the Académie Nationale de Musique -
Théâtre de l'Opéra, a title it held until 1978, when it was renamed Théâtre
National de l'Opéra de Paris . The Opéra was the inspiration for the 1910
novel Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, upon which Andrew Lloyd
Webber based his now very famous musical of the same name.

A dominant feature of
the interior of the building is the Grande
Escalier or Grand Staircase. The interior of the building is very opulent
with much gilding and artwork.

The Palais Garnier seats about 2 200 in the audience under
a chandelier which weighs more than six tons. This chandelier fell during a
performance of Helle in May 1896,
killing a member of the audience, a Mme Chomette, a 56-year-old concierge who
had been sitting in seat number 13. The collapse of the chandelier started a
fire.

Underneath the Palais
Garnier is a fairly extensive “lake” of water in which blind fish live. It
is a building redolent with stories and legends which the casual observer would
not guess from the exterior, making it a fitting subject for a Gothic tale.

Place Vendme

Place Vendôme

From the Palais
Garnier down the Rue de la Paix
is another beautiful and historic Paris Place – the Place Vendôme.

The square, in the 1st arrondissement, was formerly the home
of the illegitimate son of King Henri IV and his mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées, the duc de
Vendôme. It was first laid out as a monument to the glories of Louis XIV’s
armies and was intitally called the Place des Conquêtes, but this was changed to Place Louis le
Grand on account of the victories of Louis’ armies proved rather ephemeral.
A statue of Louis on horseback was put in the square where the column later
erected by Napoleon now stands. The development of the square proceeded from
1702 to about 1720, the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart being in charge of the
design. Interestingly when the square was first begun as a square it was still
some distance outside of Paris proper.

Napoleon was obviously greatly pleased about
the outcome of the Battle of Austerlitz as he erected La Colonne Vendôme to
celebrate the victory, the third monument to it in Paris after the Arc de
Triomphe and La Madeleine! The column itself is modelled after the
famous Trajan’s Column in Rome. It is clad with spiralling bas-relief plates
made of bronze, allegedly melted down from the enemy cannons captured in the
battle.

The communards tore down the column but it
was re-erected in 1875 when France again became a republic.

Neuchtel and the lake

Baie de lEvole

Switzerland and Neuchâtel

Now it is time to leave the wonderful “City
of Light” to continue our Grand Tour and make our way to Switzerland.

The first place we get to in Switzerland is Neuchâtel in Western Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Neuchâtel. Neuchâtel dates from 1011 when Burgundian King Rudolf
III presented a new castle (hence the name Neuchâtel which means, of course, “new castle”)
there to his wife Irmengarde. The county of Neuchâtel went through many vicissitudes over the next
centuries, even at one time being the princedom of one of Napoleon’s marshalls,
Berthier, who never set foot in the place, although he did authorise the
restoration of infrastructure in his fiefdom.

The Lake which takes its name
from the city is the largest lake entirely in Switzerland. It is 38.3
kilometres long and 8.2 at its widest. The water reaches a depth of 152 metres.

The photograph of the Baie de l’Evole shows
that the lake can become quite rough when the wind is right!

Zytglogge

Berne and the Zytglogge

From Neuchâtel
we go to Berne, capital city of the Swiss Federation, and site of many
interesting tourist sights, not least of which is the Zytglogge, which in Swiss German means “time bell.” The bell which
hangs in the tower was cast in October 1405 and has, since then, rung on the
hour every hour! No mean feat to have an employment record of 600 years. It
weighs nearly a ton and a half. The building in which it is housed was
origianlly built in about 1218 as part of the city’s defenses. When those
defenses were extended in about 1346 the building was used as a women’s prison,
most likely hosing women accused of having sexual relations with priests, known
as Pfaffendirnen or
“priests’ whores.”

The town of Berne was burned
to the ground in 1405 and a huge reconstruction effort was undertaken,
rebuidling the city in stone instead of the former wood. It was at this time
that the tower took the shape it has now, with a few alterations over the
years.

The clock’s movement was
improved in 1530 and has remained much the same since then. Interestingly the
tower also has an astronomical clock showing phases of the moon and the
astrological sign of the time.

Berne and the Alps

J.M.W. Turners famous watercolour called The Blue Rigi, Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise

Lucerne and the Rigi

The Rigi and Lucerne

From Berne we travel to Lucerne with its Chapel Bridge and
fabulous views of Mount Pilatus and Mount Rigi. The latter is also called the
“Queen of the Mountains” and was made additionally famous by the fact that
great English artist J.M.W. Turner painted it several times. Turner’s famous
watercolour called “The Blue Rigi, Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise” sold in 2006 for
US$11 million!

In this photo of Lucerne
Rigi can be seen across the lake and the Chapel Bridge just left of centre in
the foreground.

This bridge, the oldest wooden bridge in
Europe, was built across the River Reuss in 1333. The bridge was part of the
city’s fortifications and is covered. Inside the bridge is a series of
paintings dating from the 17th Century. These paintings, most of
which were destroyed in a 1993 fire, depicted scenes from the history of the
city. The bridge is some 200 metres long

The tower adjoining the bridge is the
so-called Wasserturm (Water Tower). This is an octagonal tower about 43 metres
tall and was used in the past as, among other things, a prison and torture
chamber.

And so we come to the end of our Grand Tour in photographs,
having learned I hope something about Western Europe and its rich and varied
history.

Maybe we have had a “trace” of all the places we have
visited through the photographs “stencilled” into our beings, and are the
richer for it.

More by this Author

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Hi, I'm curious where your family is from. I notice the difference in the spelling of Duplessis, I'm assuming the broken and lower case "du" would be more of an original French spelling.

The Lost Dutchman 7 years ago from Flanders (Belgium)

Impressive!

shyamchat 7 years ago from Calcutta

This is an excellentcollection and also a very effective method of showcasing the same.

Yet in another article, you may post a comparison between the photos taken during early last century and current situations.

I am sure your friends will enjoy such a photo-feature !

druneric 7 years ago from Ohio

I'm trying to sqeeze in a few minutes to get to know some of the people who've gotten to know me. I'm afraid to add to my "fan of" list because I'm one of those old-fashioned people who feels she must read and respond to everything.

This is wonderful, I love black/white and sepia photos, there is something intriguing about them. The hub is also rich in interesting and well researched information. This is what I would call a 'top Hub'

mythbuster 7 years ago from Utopia, Oz, You Decide

An excellent collection of photos. Thank you for sharing.

Peggy W 6 years ago from Houston, Texas

What a wonderful collection of old postcards. Knowing that your relatives would have seen all of those places while doing the "Grand Tour" makes it even more interesting. To top it off, your descriptions of the history makes this even better. Thank you!

tonymac04 6 years ago from South Africa Author

Thanks all for commenting! I see I have been very remiss in not thanking you before. Sorry about that!

Love and peace

Tony

lisadpreston 6 years ago from Columbus, Ohio

I always learn something from you. I love history and this was a brilliant way to share your knowledge, through photographs and pictures. I loved them all. Thank you.

tonymac04 6 years ago from South Africa Author

Lisa - thanks for your kind words, thanks for visiting and reading, thanks for commenting. All of these are deeply and sincerely appreciated!

Love and peace

Tony

habee 6 years ago from Georgia

I can spend hours pouring over old photos! You have some great ones here!

tonymac04 6 years ago from South Africa Author

Yes Habee - there is something magical about old photos, isn't there? I love them also.

Thanks for dropping by and commenting.

Love and peace

Tony

maggs224 6 years ago from Sunny Spain

What a great way to use your photographs, I feel like I have had my own mini Grand Tour. I have rated your hub up. This is an excellent hub.

tonymac04 6 years ago from South Africa Author

Maggs - thanks so much for dropping by and commenting. I really appreciate your kind words.

Love and peace

Tony

myawn 6 years ago from Florida

very nice photos they tell a lot of wonderful history

tonymac04 6 years ago from South Africa Author

Myawn - thanks for stopping by and commenting. I love old photos and the stories they tell!

Love and peace

Tony

vocalcoach 6 years ago from Nashville Tn.

These photos are really marvelous. What an outstanding hub this is. Tony, you have really out-done yourself. Truly wonderful in every way. Appreciate it so much. thank you and a big thumbs up!

Fantastic. I too am a collector of photos. It is amazing at what we don't see that is actually there. I can look at photo a hundred times and each time see something I didn't see before. They are our eyes to the past as well as showing us the possibilities of our future. Love'd this hub.

tonymac04 5 years ago from South Africa Author

Abecedarian - thanks for a deightful comment! I really appreciate it. Old photos so have a magic about them, don't they?

Thanks for stopping by.

Love and peace

Tony

swedal 5 years ago from Colorado

Tony I absolutely love antique and historical pictures such as these. They are incredible and I especially like the Eifel Tower.